Phil Morton

Phil Morton (1945–2003) was an influential video artist and activist who founded the Video Area in 1970 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he taught from 1969 to 1981–82.

The Video Area that Morton founded was the first department in the United States to offer degrees in Video art. The Video Area eventually became the Video Department, which later became part of the Film, Video & New Media Department. Frequent visitors and collaborators in the Video Area during the 1970s included Steina and Woody Vasulka, Gene Youngblood, Dan Sandin, Timothy Leary, Barbara Buckner and many other active and founding members of the early Video art community. Morton introduced analog and digital computers into the curriculum of the Video Area and the School in the 1970s through the use of the Sandin Image Processor, a patch-programmable analog computer optimized for video processing and synthesis developed from 1971 - 1973, and The Bally Astrocade Arcade Video Game System, a programmable home video game console developed in 1974.

Morton's playful, critical, self-reflexive and conversational Video art works, projects and performances often involved ongoing collaborations. In particular, Morton collaborated extensively with artists Jane Veeder, Dan Sandin, Tom DeFanti and Jamie Fenton. In 1973, Morton asked Dan Sandin if he could build the first copy of Sandin's original Sandin Image Processor. Sandin and Morton then began to work together to create the schematic plans for the Sandin Image Processor, a document they called the Distribution Religion. Through The Distribution Religion, Sandin open sourced his Sandin Image Processor, giving the plans away for only the cost of making Xerox copies and mailing them while incorporating any additions or modifications made by those who built their own Sandin Image Processor into any further releases of the Distribution Religion.

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